It is curious about wood-engravers: there is one thing they all seem to have in common, a kind
of quiet dignity and rectitude that pervades their life and work; probity perhaps is the word.
It may have something to do with the medium in which they work, the discipline involved in so
exacting an art, the necessity for planning and foresight in a method wherein a mistake is
always fatal. Perhaps it derives from the nature of the medium itself, so unobtrusive,
precise, and uncompromising that for its appreciation one must meet it more than half way.
Method and rightness inhere in the work of all true wood-engravers, and somehow these virtues
are to be discovered in their characters also. In real life they are the most estimable of
men. Quiet and industrious, sober and responsible, they let their work speak for
them.
1

What Carl Zigrosser says about wood-engravers as a class, seems to have a special relevance
for the career of Allen Lewis in particular. Though little known today, Lewis was in fact
highly regarded in his own time, admired and praised by such seminal figures in modern
American art as Hamilton Easter Field and Alfred Stieglitz. Like many other American artists
active in the first half of this century, Lewis has only recently been rediscovered by scholars.

He established a routine, sketching during the day and attending sessions at the Academie
Colarossi during the evening. In addition, Lewis enrolled in the atelier of the well-known
French painter Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904), at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Many American
artists, including Thomas Eakins
(1844-1916), Will Hickock Law
(1853-1930), Boardman Robinson (1876-1952), and Theodore Robinson
(1852-96), had already studied with this master.

Little of Gerome's detailed and highly finished style can be seen in Lewis's work, but the
Frenchman's strict discipline did provide his students with a solid foundation in design upon
which they could build their own styles. Gerome taught his students to study their subject
thoroughly before beginning work, and this deliberate, careful approach remained with Lewis,
is for the rest of his career.

Lewis lived frugally while in Paris, supplementing the small allowance he received from
his parents with a salary of fifty francs a month which he earned as a church sexton.
The church post was strictly a business arrangement for him, for he was a free thinker and
did not take seriously the things he encountered in the church. In addition, an occasional
pupil provided him with additional funds. His pupils were either wealthy amateurs desiring
a few lessons, or more serious artists, like Donald Shaw MacLaughlan (1876-1938), a Bostonian.

As he worked and studied abroad, Lewis kept his parents regularly informed of his activities.
They appear to have been well pleased with his progress but they wanted him to return to his
native land. Lewis, though, was reluctant to leave, as he wrote them in 1900:

Lewis regarded each of his bookplates as experiments whose designs grew out of his client's
specific needs.16 To achieve the effects
he wanted, Lewis often fashioned his own printmaking tools from such
unconventional materials as bicycle spokes, forks, and crochet needles.
He felt strongly that while bookplates should be both well-designed and
personal, they should not be too complex, for, as he cautioned,
"a bookplate is primarily a label, so this use should not be lost sight of."17
n his best bookplates he did indeed create designs which were distinctive, yet suitable for
his clients' needs. He remained constantly aware of the limitations as well as the
possibilities of these small-scale art works.

Lewis showed forty-three drypoints, etchings, and bookplates at 291. Haviland wrote an
astute commentary on this, Lewis's first one-man exhibition, and the commentary was
accompanied by a special catalogue designed and printed by the artist:

While Lewis cannot be regarded historically as an avant-garde artist, he did possess
qualities which would have attracted Stieglitz's attention. Lewis was a slow and careful
worker who, much like Stieglitz, was always concerned to maintain the highest standards of
craftsmanship. Lewis never sought to produce art on a mass scale, and Stieglitz must have
admired this selfless devotion to a craft.

Even though this bookplate was executed for one of Lewis' most distinguished patrons, one
cannot regard this as one of his most successful designs. Though technically difficult to
execute, the bookplate lacks the straightforward, legible design characteristic of his other
work. Lewis achieved his most effective designs within a more limited range and with less
complex means.

In 1915, Lewis received his first commission for a book illustration--Journeys to Bagdad
by Charles S. Brooks. Even in this first work, Lewis established his
characteristic approach to book illustration. He carefully considered the relation of
the image to the page as a whole, taking particular pains with both the type design and
the lettering, feeling these as important as the illustrations to the visual integrity of
the book as a whole. The editorial staff of The New Yorker must have admired Lewis's taste,
for the magazine pirated for its cover masthead and paragraph headings the title page
typestyle Lewis had used in Journeys to Bagdad.

Lewis produced some of his most beautiful illustrations for the Limited Editions Club, for
which he did Undine in 1930 and Ivanhoe in 1940. Undine, a seventeenth century German tale
of a water nymph, was one of the first books issued by the Club. The Club gave Lewis almost
complete freedom, allowing him to choose not only the artistic character of the work, but
the book itself. Lewis designed the Morris-like borders and type for Undine, supervised
each stage of production, and executed as much as he could by hand himself to avoid using
machines. He paid such attention to detail that it took fifteen months to complete the work.

To understand the painstaking task of making such engravings, we can turn to Lewis himself
for a description of his methods as a craftsman and artist. In the following passage he
describes how he created The Preaching of St. Francis to the Birds, a work executed in 1933
for the Woodcut Society:

Lewis exhibited his works and won honors for them throughout his career. In 1904 the first
honor came, a bronze medal at the St. Louis Exposition. A decade later, at the 1915
Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, he won a gold medal for his showing. In the
following year, Lewis participated in the first annual exhibition of the Brooklyn Society
of Etchers, an organization of which he served as the first president. This 1916 show
included works by Eugene Higgins, John Marin, and Abraham Walkowitz. Two years later, in
1918, he had two more oneman shows, one in Boston at Godspeeds Bookshop and the other at
Milch Galleries in New York. Finally, in 1929, he was elected an Associate of the National
Academy of Design, and in 1935 made a full Academician.

Lewis was at the height of his career during the 1930s, but the 1940s proved discouraging
for him. He began to receive fewer commissions, and his health deteriorated. Never an
extrovert, he lacked a keen business sense, and his precise techniques made his work slow
and difficult. In these later years, he turned from the production of art to the study of
the Old Masters. He devised a theory in which he sought to demonstrate how all art, from
the prehistoric to modern times, was based upon a system involving the square and the
compass. He was hardly successful, however, in his attempts to disseminate his ideas.

When his former student, Norman Kent, wrote about Lewis's long and quiet life, he noted
that, "in his modesty he [Lewis] considered himself a
failure."28 Lewis never did achieve
the wide success of some of his contemporaries, such as Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), but
Zigrosser, among others, feels that Lewis was one of the "pioneers in the rehabilitation
of the woodcut as a means of creative
expression."29 In his work, Lewis
attempted to restore to the craft that devotion he so admired in old books and that he felt
conspicuously lacking in modern work. The painstaking care, high standards, and sound
craftsmanship - all of these things may be seen in his print,
The Old Woodcutter. Working methodically and seriously in a style based
solidly on tradition, he aligns himself not only with his beloved Old Masters, but also
with the Arts and Crafts aesthetic of William Morris. To understand Lewis we must
appreciate his perseverance in his chosen medium and his unshakable faith in the integrity
of his own methods. Lewis the artist was above all else a craftsman, a man for whom the
process of production proved as important as the product itself.